MU'S ORIGINS
(Mutation story with Doc Dew Gudd in "Mu's Third Eye", from “OBT”)
Sir Mom looks at me with a serious, almost stern expression.
"0K, I confess," I tell her glibly. "What did you find that I did wrong this time."
She ignored my bating-her. "I've mentioned over the years that you were created as an experiment. But the time has come for me to give you a fuller picture, as full a picture as I can give."
The way she says this makes me a bit cautious. It's the stern, apologetic tone she uses when telling me something she knows I'll have trouble with.
"Some years ago, a few years before you were born, we started getting the Intergalactic Messages. The first one's were very basic, but clearly they let us know they were from an intelligent race and one that knew quite a bit about us. The astounding thing was that each of the Four Major Realms got messages in their own terms.
"We in the Science Sector got the messages coded in radio waves, light, and gravitational pulsations in the earth. The Food and Agriculture-- Sector found telling patterns in the fields of crops. The other two Sectors likewise received communications in their own terms.
"The power of these communications mobilized representatives of the Four Sectors to meet and see what they could piece together. We were thus prepared when, soon after, we got a clear, comprehensive Message. This is the story we got.
I've heard most of this many times before, but since Sir Mom was in it from the beginning, I know she has new information and insights for me.
"The contact was from a planet, or whole cosmos, for all we know, they named Obt. Those on Obt claimed they seeded the human race on Urth some millions of years ago and, since then, guarded and guided it. Masters of thought field projection, which you can well appreciate, Mu, they were able to keep track of our progress and setbacks. They would project key archetypal realizations and healing perspectives to us as we mature to counter the negative and destructive. Psyches that were prepared and receptive were able to receive and find expression for these key awarenesses. Even they could share them in their chosen fields -science, literature, the arts, mathematics, and philosophy. Each would manifest the Message in ways that humanity could assimilate.
"So things went over the millenniums. They on Obt were conscientious about their foster child -humanity- as best they could, considering the lack of explicit contact. Apparently, they had felt that it was best for humanity not to be aware of their vital assistance so that it could believe itself evolving independently.
"Then what change I as150. I know a lot about the Messages, but never heard why they were sent. "Something happened that's so terrible they have to come out of hiding?"
"In a sense , Yes. They believe their ancient species is going extinct. Their numbers dwindle drastically with each generation. As a result they want to open their world to us for a period of time as a way of fulfilling their obligation and then closing the contact forever. According to what we understood by combining the Messages to the Four Sectors is that Obt beings invite Urth to send a dozen representatives, 12 people, to visit there for an Urth month. During that time they have total freedom there. They may go anywhere and have access to anything or person that interests them.
Obviously, each Sector has bred and trained the 3 representatives according to their own needs and interests. As we did with Rosario and Nihil. But, with you, as all Sectors agreed, we need one Representative that isn’t preset, narrow-gauged in focus, but one that has no restrictions and mind-sets. We need one without the usual human boundaries or expectations and thus, hopefully, would be able to deal with the unexpected.
Mom Elisa smiles at me, and nods.
"These beings from Obt have only told us about themselves in the most general, abstract way. Everything they share has a certain indefiniteness about it -because of the vast distances, or just as an alien mind. We know nothing of their species, their culture.. We actually don't even know how they communicate. So, here you are, uniquely evolved to manifest humanity's fullest potential in sensing and awareness to answer to that need
"Will they know what to do with me," I ask uneasily. "I mean, they might not even think I'm human."
Sir Mom stops pacing and sits down to face me on my perch. "That's exactly why I've brought this up, Mu. Dr. Douglas and I feel you need more preparation for this than we'd planned for."
I don't like the sound of this at all. "Preparation?"
"You are our 'backup potential' on the Mission. You were mutated to develop your fullest potentials. All the latent and subtle human capacities, in you are fulfilled. But knowing 'from the beginning that your form on the Mission must be that of a normal human, your clone was prepared and is awaiting that rich mind and soul you've developed."
She paused glanc4Co her upper right. Her brain waves drop into alpha as she imagines how to say this. "Before the Mission leaves, your psyche will be transferred into a normal human body. Actually, it is another you. The two of you were cloned from the same fetus. It looks the way you would have without the adaptations. It’s been raised in pre-birth consciousness, floating in a vat that feeds and exercises it and keeps it unconscious. For all purposes, other than the primal survival patterns, its mind is vacant. Before the Mission leaves, your psyche will be transferred into it. That other you should be a comfortable vehicle for you to explore Obt in. And, if you wish, you might spend the rest of your life in it.
To her, it’s just a change in my packaging. The fact is, strange as it might be to them, I'm very used to being the way I am. And I've got doubts about giving it up.
I suppose the geneticists who were pulling and stretching my genes and chromosomes to peak them up, weren't too concerned with the aesthetics they were also creating. It didn't matter much because its only temporary packaging – that seems to be the idea. Well, apart from the parts of my body that I feel are essential -my glider wings, the unique organs that let me experience all I do- I can imagine myself looking any way at all.
When I talk with Rosaria and ask how she would like to have wings or light projectors, she thinks it’s strange, if not repulsive. But I imagine how great it would be to have other transphysical channels to communicate through. Sound and visual and sensing experiences to share that no one else could even know about.
REVEALS ANTENNA TO ROSARIA
I'd never revealed the full use of my antennas before. To anyone. Sir Mom, of course, knows me better anatomically than anyone else. But I've carefully guided her away from realizing they had anything but limited capacities. Like just broad band sensors, extensions of my ears.
But when Rosaria and I talk, I feel seen. As much as Elise and Doc Dew Gudd are concerned and care for me. Even so, for them I'm still some 'thing'. With Rosaria, something connects between us that lets me know I'm a real person to her. Some 'one'. Not just a clever freak it benefits her to know.
Partly I kept secret about the capacities the antennas offered me because I wanted something private and un-analyzable. And partly because I felt awkward, ashamed when I saw my reflection with them fully extended. A three eyed owl with horns! Looked demonic, even to me.
Rosaria had seen me use them often enough. In the synesthesia training, I use them in a number of ways. Sometimes even in full extension. But she was usually too absorbed in her own experiences to pay much attention to anything else. In the Sound and Light, they're my most obvious means to propagate energies.
But when she asked me about them with a curiosity that told me she was really interested, I gave her a demo. Since I'd gotten to know her well, I easily sensed the energy harmonics that would bring her aura into balanced fulfillment. Then, with my antennas fully extended and mobilized as telepathic transceivers, I brought my aura into that resonance.
She gasped with pleasure, then gave me a mischievous smile confirming her scent of pheromones.
"So that's how you give us such adventures in the Sound and Light. You're tuning it for each one of us. Individually! No wonder everyone gets such a marvelous experience." She reflects for a moment, then smiles to herself. "And with your perceptive organs open to the din of our responses, from auras and brain waves to odors." She laughs at the thought.
She gets me.
FULL SENSING SUNRISE
Of course, the most splendid times for me are the sunrises.
I wake up after sleeping in my tunnel cave like I’ve been squashed in a box. My body wants to breathe deeply and my sensing wants to get free of the closeness. I swoop up the air vent and, in moments, I'm soaring off to my favorite lookout hill. I make a stop along the way to empty myself, which I also find much more satisfying in the open rather than in that closet of a toilette I'm forced to use down there.
Splendor Hill, I call it. It gives the longest view to the East around here. I make sure I get up there while it’s still fully night, stars still in their radiance. The desert is really quiet then. It can be silent. I've seen other beautiful areas of the country - going to Mission coordination meetings in other Sectors – but there is no hush like the desert’s hush.
I boost my body heat up, and slow my metabolism down, way down. Wakeful sleep. And that’s when I deeply greet the sunrise and the dawn – I feel that I invoke it, and it happens. Even though my mind knows it’s the earth’s rotating toward the sun, still I have the sense of being involved in a nonphysical way – earth turning, sun rising - and me making it happen. In my mind it’s silly, but it’s my entreaty.
Every sense is open, thirstily drinking in the palette of star songs against the background of galaxies inaudible humming. If the moon is up, there is the added cold brilliance of sunlight reflected in her gaze.
In this stillness, I perceive our slowly rising sun itself with all my perceptions. Its transforming cords join the sky's symphony. A birthing happens inside me as it gathers, magnifies and ascends. It is in this birthing that I can surrender to it all.
Whatever doubt or unhappiness might have been with me when I woke, the fullness and rightness of this cosmic unfolding reassures me in this conscious submission. Receiving and giving myself fully over to its harmony reconnects me to my own soul as part of it.
But, in this entire splendor that I experience, I sense that it’s only a preparation for me for a range of experience and connectedness beyond all that, as if beyond the realms of space and time. And so I consciously aspire to the full range of energy emanations of love and compassion in the realm of living beings, and to the deepest reverberations of Urth's layers in their shifting and linking, through sounds and lights of all ranges, and to the subtlest vibrations in the entire cosmos. Yet, with all that, I somehow know there is something beyond, beneath and higher than all that. It is that which I desire.
It aggravates, sometimes offends me, that with all my aptitudes and gifts, I still can't define, let alone control, this something beyond. Yet, when I'm in the right frame of mind and inner sensing, feeling graced, it can touch and move me in many ways when I invoke, surrender and aspire at sunrise. Beyond imagining. Maybe, for now, I could just think of it as the ‘beyond’. And leave it at that for now.
Then back down the vent tube. Into the man hewn, angular labyrinth where Sir Mom awaits with today's chores and expectations. Our "daily schedule," she calls it.
CONFRONTATION
"Must be nice to be such an ugly thing that you can despise everyone else."
My Team mate, Nihil, finds me hanging from my claws during a break in our grueling class sessions trying to calm myself. "And your good looks justify your dull wittedness?" I respond. If he couldn't leave me alone, he'd better draw his sword.
"Someone told me you didn't get top of the class on the last exam. Got distracted by your vaudeville show? Maybe you really can't do everything." Though he sees life as a contest, that I agree with, he thinks that kicking others aside is all right. I don't. It’s a question of superiority, not treachery. And Nihil is not one of my favorites.
But I understand what angers him. I unclaw and slowly drift down to face him. Well, not quite, as he's a head taller than I am. "Look, you pretend it’s my form that bothers you, the membranes that turn Li(arms into wings, my eyes that can dilate to pick up the full spectrum of energy vibrations.
"You joke among yourselves that I'm a parody of the human form. Maybe it is disturbing to see what a little bioengineering can do to your flawless design. But these years of watching you, observing you in dimensions you'd be fearful to even imagine, I come to understand its the openness of my mind that terrifies you most.
"Year by year, as you went through the prescribed, ritualized adjustments, drugged into proto-conscious states and edited to fit the Sector's Format, I realized you came to suspect and fear me more each time. You are robotized in a way I escape because of my role in the Mission.
Experiences that are unconscious for you, because of the partitions and blocks in your psyche, to me are accessible and a means of knowing reality differently. I should feel some sympathy for your kind, Nihil, or a least pity for your inevitable blundering. But you can't imagine how difficult and unpleasant it is for me. I need to sensor references to things that you humans are too numb to notice.
"Mu 469, not only a ghastly omen bird, but an unedited 'natural' freak besides," I mockingly call in his face.
Nihil grimaces at me and takes a sharp in-breath. He's is ready to strike out. He'd be way too slow to be of any danger to me, of course.
I've said my piece. That was enough. So I tell him, "I have no interest in Rosaria beyond our friendship. She's one of the few people I enjoy talking with. Which I certainly don't think about you. So, you'll excuse me now." And I leap over the railing and float down to the hall below, chirping all the way.
NATURE
I got a chance to go visit the gardens this morning. I get so taken up in my rather full days that I forget how much it pleasures me to hang around and listen to the green language of the plants.
Much as I love the boundless sense of the desert, sometimes its scrubby patches aren't quite enough to green quench my thirst. And I always get such a caring welcome from
Miss Telsa. She looks more and more like a gnome from one of Doc Dew Gudd books every time I see her. She seems to be slowly folding in two. Doc explained that, according to the Ancient Way, they were the Angel's Urth helpers. Miss Telsa is certainly an angel to me. They discovered early on that, while everybody else could survive on synthofood, I would waste away without mainly soil grown foods. They had started some plots a few years before as an experiment in raising flowers. That's when Miss Telsa had volunteered. So it was easy to get me started on roots and leaves to see if that helped.
Since the first time we met, she treats me with a courtesy that borders on respect. I'm not sure what its based on. Except that, maybe, as a gnome she can plainly see in me what to others is a mystery. She even built a special perch for me where I'm surrounded, no, I'm embraced by tall plants. The dear magic lady set up a air circulator that sways us with a flow like the waves on Doc Dew Gudd's computer.
I haven't been allowed to travel other than on Mission concerns, but it’s rumored that there are some patches of natural lands left. Woods, grasslands. But because of the contamination of all the rivers and oceans with toxic waste, anything that survived the wars was destroyed in a peaceful way. But from my renewing sensations soaking in the bounty of photosynthesis, it must have been heavenly.
TRANSPOSITION
"Are you going to be helping in this, Elisia?" I wasn't sure if she'd show up here or not. She wore a tight smile and her aura reached to clasp me. This was a new me coming into being now. A normal looking, grown up me that maybe wouldn't want a Sir Mom.
"Doctor Douglas thought you might like to have me around. Hopefully to be a stabilizing influence. Since nobody knows you better than I do."
Dear Sir Mom. She had that right. Though some of the things she knows best about me aren't really true. "Yes, Elisia, it will be reassuring to see you through human eyes." She smiled back brightly at me.
I motion to Doc Dew Gudd who is standing near the operating table. "I need some more reassurance, Doc Dew Gudd. This is going to be a perfect fit for me, isn't it? I mean, we two really were made for each other. Right?"
"It is you, Mu. You are clones from the same zygote. That clone, under suspended animation, is a model of the human norm. It developed and matured unconscious but fully activated physically.
But will it still feel like me?"
"We can only theorize. But we hopefully assume that your deep study and familiarity with humanity should make the transition easier." His expression and tone, one hand resting on the back of my neck are to soothe and reassure me.
But as I feel the numbing coolness of the sedative begin to run through my blood, I know that what I'm asking is an imponderable. There's no way to tell what is going to happen. "10...9...8...7...6...5...4...3..."
"Will he be in much pain when he comes to?" Rosaria asks with warm concern.
"Not if he can get along with his new packaging." Doc's sense of humor always comes right to the point.
"And what about his Mu body?...." Sir Mom covers all emergencies. "It'll be in stasis till the Mission returns. Then he can decide." A deep sigh of relief flows through me. No matter what happens, I know Doc Dew Gudd is always on my side.
"He's here!" Rosaria exclaims.
"Can you move? Do you hear us?" Sir Mom like to get a handle on things right away.
"Wait,"...said. "He's not ready to respond yet. Can't you see, he's barely there."
Yes, I'm here, I decide. That was a long way to go, I realize. Like a million years of devolution. I was fully manifested, and now this. Gratefully, I feel fairly at home with my new body. But as I scan my awareness through it, there's a very different sense about the whole configuration. I'm diminished. Numbed. Partly deaf, dumb and blind.
I'm in a flexible coffin.
"Yes, yes. I'm here." I moan. I'm already weary. "Thank you for meeting me from the other side," I tell them, and look around at the three of them. I recognize my old voice, but it resonates differently. Deeper, not as breezy. "Thank you. Elisia. Rosaria. Dr. Douglas. But please excuse me. I exhausted and feel I must sleep for a week.
CONFESSION TO ROSARIA
"At first, after the transition, I just couldn't get myself used to this body. It was o.k. just after I woke up. If I didn't move. You know, it wasn't painful or anything. But as soon as I'd move, I'd go into some kind of overwhelm. I couldn't really tell what it was -fear, grief, strangeness, frustration. But soon I was in a panic and was given another couple of c.c.s of sleepy bye," I tell her, trying to sound braver than I felt.
Rosaria is being so kind with me, hearing every detail of my travail while she walks over the desert hills with me. It's Spring in full flower, clusters of green over the sands after the rains. And she is wonderful to be with. One definite plus about this human form is what its opened for us to share.
"But, didn't you have pretty much the same wiring in the other body?" She chuckles sweetly to let me know there is no offense intended.
"This form I'm in now is clumsy, and the nervous system is horribly numb. My specialized organs of perception and expression are gone. So, tragically, I'm sealed off from my higher sensing and perception, left with only these five feeble senses to pear out through. Though I might appear fairly normally functional to you out there, Rosaria, from in here, I'm nearly deaf, dumb and blind in this flexible coffin."
"Can you imagine how it was for me then, perceiving...all of it. An underlying awareness of electromagnetic wave fields that let me sense cosmic rays and gam rays and neutrinos from the sun. And, with the same sensing, when I was with someone I grasped the full spectrum of their character and state, perhaps thoughts and feelings, through gleeping their aura.
And with the truth of who they are so clearly before me, I'd have to listen to the narrow pretend they wanted to believe.
She takes my hand and swings it as she laughs. "That trial I put you through in front of the Council. I was so blind. To me. I'm sorry, Mu."
I smile back at her with pleasing tenderness and take her hand with both of mine. "A misunderstanding. Now we both know better."
We find a place to sit in a shadow of an overhanging side of a hill. My urges still feel as much animal as human. But now I can't fly up to rest of that hilltop for a better view. But the view is splendid from down here, actually. And I'm especially enjoying Rosaria being next to me.
"I am guilty, over my lifetime, of despising human beings," I start my apology with a confession. "I somehow assumed you normal humans really could sense all I did. But just weren't bright enough to know what to do with it. But now I see, even with all my experience in those realms, in this body I can't get to them myself. I think there must be a way, because all that higher sensing and knowing is so vital to me for a meaningful life. Maybe that's what I'm going to OBT in order to find out.
"Because we want an openness between us, I have to confess something more to you, Rosaria. Though outwardly, I presented myself as a superior being, but many times, after a day getting used to seeing nothing but humans, I'd find my own form unexpected and grotesque. I was special, I'd often remind myself, but I was not an attractive freak."
She looks at me with wonderful, warm caring. "I felt that," she assures me. "I felt your special soul, even in that strange form.
In spite of all these human limitations, for some reason, this is the first time I'm moved by my feelings and emotions. In that mutant body, feelings were there. But it was like they really didn't have anything to do with me. Just part of the passing scenery. But in this human body, sometimes I can barely think, I feel so bombarded with feelings. Strong, clear, certain feelings that want to direct me in many directions at once.
"I have to laugh at myself. As Mu, I thought I was open to so many experiences you humans couldn't even imagine. And there I was, numb to this unbelievable splendor of emotion that you humans take for granted. The archaic religions taught me marvelous things about using my mind. But when they called on my heart for faith or devotion, I couldn't follow. Now I understand how impossible that wound have been for me.
"With all my sensory capacities, I couldn't get some of the ways you humans had of making contact, of "connecting". I'd fruitlessly scan through every spectrum. But I knew something happened in the ways you could relate with each other that left me unable to track, confused. Now I realize it was about feeling. Emotion was the carrier wave I couldn't tune into to. "As I say this, I burst into laughter. Now I'm tuning in to it fine.
Her eyes hold such caring for me. I feel it pour through my eyes and down into my heart. I squeeze her to me,
"Come with me, Rosaria. I need some hugging as consideration."
She chuckles back and comes with me. We're together on my bed.
"Mu," Rosaria bursts into a gleeful laugh, "we don't bend that way."
"But can't we just dislocate these joints a little and..."
She hugs me to her with abandonment. "We're as close as we can get in these bodies," she lovingly coos and strokes my cheek. "But we're completely together inside, aren't we."
HUMAN FOIBLES
I'm afraid I've gotten dependent on Rosaria. Opened in a way I never did with Sir Mom or Doc Dew Gudd. A human...
I have to say it’s very scary. And a relief. What I always feared the most has happened. I opened myself to a human. And I'm still here.
I felt it happening. Some shift in the interpenetration of our auras. A harmonic developed between us that really pleased me. That I could never have created by myself. But just experiencing it as vibrations, pleasant though it was, didn't give me the full picture.
That got clearer for me of this last week. And just now, with Nihil, I got a core understanding. Rosaria, kept especially busy with recent equipment projects, hasn't come around for our usual chats. I thought I'd use the time to polish some flying maneuvers. But rather than my usual joyful relief floating above the endless desert, I found myself getting bored with the bareness and occasional clusters of scruffy sagebrush.
Mostly, I've spent more time in inner trance states.
When I mentioned this to Doc Dew Gudd in this morning's session, he suggested I try some socializing. Nihil and a few of the Staff I don't know very well, were going to the Amusement Station after lunch and invited me to come. A very unusual occurrence and Doc Dew Gudd's work, no doubt.
I'd been to the Amusement Station a few times. Some of the sensing devices are clever and give feedback on excitement levels as the tri-di take you through bliss and horrors. But after the powerful dramas of my inner exploits, tri-di sounded pretty dull. I took them up on the offer though, in appreciation of Doc Dew Gudd's kind gesture.
Of course, after a short while, even with the usual chemical mood boosters they use, we had nothing to say to each other. They jabbered about some tournament traveling the Sectors. And I couldn't think of anything base enough to hold their attention. Nihil started getting argumentative, not having much resource to draw on. Even in my human form, he had a hard time dealing with me. I saw it was time to go back to my Home Cave.
Just now, as I came into my Cave, I felt a deep relief at being alone. To drop that protective shield I had with them. To tune back into that inner sense of me. That's when I realized I can be just this way with Rosaria. It isn't about being alone, the safety of solitude I'd treasured my whole life. That I'm open and trusting enough with her to be me as much as when I'm by myself, that's what tells me what the richness of the vibrations come from. It’s that emotion thing again. We're in love.
LEAVING FOR THE MISSION
Now, just hours before we're to be put into suspension for the Mission, I realize what a handicap I have. All those years disdaining humans because of their blindness to obvious things all around them. Not only am I blind to all that now too, I'm also ignorant and awkward in compensation for that blindness. As many of them are.
"Why is this so painful for you?"
"In the Mu body it all felt like it was there to give expression to my soul. This one feels like its here to stifle it, like the primal purpose of this body's design is for labor, course and rigid. The Mu body was for flight, flexible, light and sensitive.
"I still have the phantom sense of that body and being, the shadow of that wondrous openness and freedom. The ease and scope of perception, the flawless physical coordination. Only the ghost of all that is left. So every thought and gesture slams me against the limiting realities of this body-mind-being. Half the senses I'd known aren't here. I'm blind to the beauty in your aura that was so clear before. I'm not able to tell when your mood pulse changes. My first realization was the truth -its like being in a flexible coffin!
"As to the brain and nervous system, there's only the primal, instinctive patterns, so there's no interference in using my own matrixing. But so much that I took for granted was lost to me.
"How am I supposed to live with all this and get on with my life?" I ask, hopefully pretending there's an answer.
Sir Mom listens to me, nodding in understanding. And I know she does. She assures me, "It's is a matter of strategies. Be aware of the losses, but recognize the compensations and rewards. And stay on track." Rosaria is certain, and often proves that an open heart transcends all that. When I question her about the open heart, she explains, "It’s about who you are for me, not what body you're in or what you can or cannot do."
Doc Dew Gudd kindly suggests that all that matters is that this makes me a more valuable, useful member of the Mission Team. How I can better serve humanity's goals on our journey to OBT.
Even though I'm blind to them now, having that extraordinary sensing and awareness all left me with a knowing about things that transcends this flatland, peekaboo consciousness I'm caged in now.
So, I guess I should let Doc Dew Gudd know that part of the theory was confirmed. I feel, in the midst of this all, that I am well prepared to relate with any kind of reality we might encounter on Obt. Except, I'm a little shaky with this present one.
By the time all 12 of us were gathered, we were unrecognizably encased in our space suits. I hadn't a chance to give Rosaria the hug I wanted to. Now, in our loading formation, we were in the machinery. Next time I'd see her will be coming out of the deep freeze. Hopefully not too far from Obt.
I'd definitely feel a lot better if I were in my own body. I could get a handle on the respiration and blood circulation to help me calm down a bit. This one seems to have the crudest regulation patterns. Or, probably, it’s that emotion thing again. I laugh at myself still bewildered by it. Maybe its just excitement. Normal, maybe, for someone possibly about to be taken to the other side of the universe.
This star vessel has the simplest propulsion and guidance system imaginable, I understand. Just enough to reach the tractor bean Obt has set up just out of Sol's range. Then we're just a packet in its grasp till we arrive. No, maybe it is fear after all that makes these innards jittery.
Alright, now I can smell the briskly penetrating sedative gas. And the temperature is slowly dropping inside my space cocoon. And it’s not a flexible coffin any more. It stiffens, rigid. All its functions slow, slow, almost stop. The blood slushes in my veins. Breathing continues, but breath more like drifting in and out. Clear consciousness notes all this without any attachment or response. Maybe because my psyche already experienced different physicalities, it’s able to just float in awareness like a boat in water.
There's still a shred of sensation left to feel the pull away from gravity, the shift of my innards and fluids. We've started our quest for Obt.
ARRIVAL
I'm awake. No. My awareness is awake, but the rest is still in a suspended state And I'm awake to a presence with me, a sensing presence. I sense it scanning me. Very lucid. Very wise. I'm surprised I can read it reading me so clearly. Not only don't I have my special sensing organs, but even this flexible coffin I'm in is still frozen stiff. This is a new one for me. And I think I'm going to like it.
"Good! We are pleased to find you come into resonance so happily. I am called Xang Tu. I am your guide and servant." I sense these words ringing in my awareness as I would in my own inner sensing.
"Boril Kuman, I am called. But how do we commune like this? This is far more than just sensing another. You are actually present. And me too. And neither in a body."
"You are the only Spoke in this Wheel whose higher knowing is awoken. The others must still live in their dream state."
Xang Tu is saying this, as if from my own inner self, leaves me feeling completely understood, though I understand nothing of the way its happening. "Then you are awoken in this way?" I asked for more than the obvious.
"Here, we are all awoken in this way. We too live through our bodies, but not limited by them. As you and I see, our knowings are adequate to this communing without the physicality at all." The tenor of his thoughts continue to soothe, to reassure me that the adventure I longed for has begun.
I feel and hear a gradual decompression and introduction of a new air mixture, fresh, gently activating. The temperature warms till I feel aliveness activated in my nerves and cells. Soon, I'm able to breath more fully and stretch out my limbs.
"Good be our meeting then, Boril Kuman,. We are pleased they have sent us the Wheel we called for with at least one Spoke we can truly contact. Next, we will meet in the body." Till now we have been claire-communicating – communing to extraordinary fullness. And now, even more so, as Xang Tu beams a radiance into my heart that sings of the deepest peace.
All that fades into the back of my mind as my body comes fully awake and active. I roll to my right side and spend a long time slowly taking a nutrient from the tube hanging there. More than anything, I'm anxious to greet and hug Rosaria. Then we can explore the mysteries of Obt, I kid myself.
She's just getting the transparent lid of her spacewomb lifted. She looks fine, if a little confused. Apparently she didn't have a telepathic welcoming party. "Hello, dear Rosaria," I call and go to take her in my arms. "We welcome you to Obt. We are pleased to bring you into happy resonance." The disembodied greeting I got still sings in me and I want to share it with her.
She looks at me with a quizzical grimace, then with a sweet accepting smile. "Yes, I am happy to resonate with you too, Boril."
The others are all up and out of their spacewombs peering at gauges and meters to see if the environment is safe and looking out the tiny slits of windows at the verdant fields all around the ship.
"It's safe," Nihil calls out assuringly. "We're here, gang. The land of Obt. The orders are to go through the decontamination chamber, one at a time, and they'll be thereto meet us."
Again, I wish I was in my own body so I could check out what' around us. No, just little tinglings of impressions. Just have to go the step by step, human route. We've arrived at the tiny door to the decontamination chamber, a few others waiting before us.
"We still don't really know anything about them, do we. It’s a total act of trust. As much chance of our being heroes as victims?" Rosaria asks with a light heartedness, as if she's interested but neutral.
"I know a bit more about them than I did before. I can reassure you, Rosaria, they have nothing but good for us."
She scans my eyes and face some moments, wondering. Then it's her turn to go through the decontaminator. She gives me a tender, brave smile. And winks mischievously before crouching to enter the chamber
The End
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